


Just a Knot in the Small of Your Back

by distefanos



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 08:37:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10408218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distefanos/pseuds/distefanos
Summary: Matt grinned again, a reckless, wild thing that brought heat rushing to Auston's cheeks and he couldn't help but grimace a little and look away, eyes tracing the wall until he found the pinhole. "He's gunna live, Matts." Marty said quietly, the grin clear in his tone even though Auston wouldn't meet it again.Auston and Matt are forever Matt and Mitch and Mitch and Auston. Rarely Auston and Matt. Never Auston, Mitch, and Matt. But when Auston gets in a fight and Mitch gets involved Auston and Matt becomes a conversation worth having.Something I wrote ages ago about the Buffalo fight and decided I may as well publish.





	

Auston perched stiffly in the cold, unfamiliar kitchen. On this floor the city lights mostly struck from below. From the far side of the marble counter all Auston saw were distant blurs of white light pricking the horizon and a whole lot of void space mostly absent of stars. His hand curled around a glass of water, pressed to his chest as he leaned between two cupboards. One foot balanced on the crossbar of a stool but he didn't feel like sitting. He glared at the neon green glow of the clock on the stove. The minutes ticked by and he tried to catch the change of the time but never seemed to be attentive at the right moment. The game and the fight on repeat in his mind, the memory of a blush burning his cheeks, the rough fabric of his jersey biting against fingers chewed raw from stress as he pulled his jersey away from his body, his throat, trying not to visibly gasp for air as the walls closed in on him. Hair across his forehead In annoying clumps. He brushed it back impatiently but post-shower it sat neatly smoothed back from his forehead.

Matt padded into the kitchen. He threw a half grin at Auston and rubbed his hands together as if to say "job finished" before he disappeared behind the fridge door. Auston shifted a little, trying to look less uncomfortable, the tinkle of glass breaking the silence as Matt rummaged through the fridge and emerged with a sparkling water. He flicked off the cap and tossed it into the sink. Matt nudged purposefully against Auston before he leaned into the cupboard door next to him and let himself sink to the floor.

"You should get a clock." Auston mumbled, apropos of nothing. Matt grunted and threw an arm out across himself to indicate his watch before pointing with his bottle at the digital clock on the stove. "Naw like a real clock. An analog one." Auston insisted. Matt shrugged and caught the fabric of Auston's pants between thumb and forefinger, yanking lightly but hard enough that Auston's free hand automatically went to his waist band. He took the hint though, and slid to the floor beside Matt, placing his glass in the centre of a dark speckled tile. They sat like that for a time. Auston could no longer see the clock from where he sat, or the window. He watched a small hole in the slate grey wall where a calendar might have hung once, before he couldn't help but return matt's gaze he felt boring into him. "What?"

Matt grinned again, a reckless, wild thing that brought heat rushing to Auston's cheeks and he couldn't help but grimace a little and look away, eyes tracing the wall until he found the pinhole. "He's gunna live, Matts." Marty said quietly, the grin clear in his tone even though Auston wouldn't meet it again.

"I know that." He snapped. He bent one knee towards his chest, pressing his big toe into the corner where two tiles met. "I don't think he's going to die or something. Jesus."

"Well then what's the problem you big mope!" Matt let his voice hang loud in the silence, making Auston wince, worried Mitch might hear him being teased from the room down the hall. He swung his knee nervously, knocking it against Matt as he did so.

"Would you keep your voice down."

"He's knocked right out, man, wouldn't hear the whole building come down I promise you." Matt replied but quieter. Auston nodded, watched a softness in Matt's face as he talked about Marns.

"You're supposed to protect him." The words tumbled out of Auston all at once when he hadn't even meant to say them. He was embarrassed and angry and frantic. He levelled his glare at the wall at first, tried to keep a posture that suggested composure but failed. He swung the glass across the tile back and forth, catching it as it slid with his palms and sending it back the other way with more and more force but still preventing the water from spilling out from the momentum. Beside him Matt sighed.

"You're being a fucking baby, Matts, you know that?"

"You're being a fucking baby!" Auston shot back. Matt guffawed and Auston had to smile in spite of himself. "Just. Fucking shut up. Alright?"

"He's not made of glass, Auston. Mitch isn't going to break into pieces because I wasn't there to stop his dumb ass from jumping into a fight."

"I never said he was."

"I thought it was kind of hot. Seeing him wade in against guys twice his size. I told him that too. He's got a nice bruise he showed me. The size of my palm across his stomach. Bruises like a peach, that boy. The bruise has your name on it, Auston."

"I didn't give him a bruise."

"No but he earned it for you."

"He shouldn't have."

"Why not? You had it? You were about to drop your gloves, were you there?"

"Fuck you."

"I just don't know what the fuck your problem is, Auston, I --"

Auston stood up then, all at once exhausted and infuriated. Why had he come here? He didn't belong. "There's no problem. I'm gunna take off." He tried to force some semblance of casual in his voice but Matt had stood with him and was bearing down on him now, a challenge lighting his eyes. He cocked an eyebrow, crowded Auston against the cupboard doors. Auston didn't move to accept the challenge. He leaned back coolly against the door, used one foot to deftly slide his glass along the tiles away from the risk of being knocked over. "I said I'm going home."

"Then go." Matt said wryly, making no move to let him leave. Auston quickly flicked through half a dozen scenarios in which he knocked Matt back and fled the scene. None seemed likely to work, others seemed likely to injure. He decided to invite the attack. He made to move sideways past Matt but when Matt stepped left to block him he shoved hard to throw him off balance. Matt anticipated this play and threw both hands out so he caught himself on the cupboard when his legs gave out, the momentum of the shove pinning Auston to the cupboard door, the sidestep meaning one of the doorknobs pressed uncomfortably into the soft flesh of his lower back. Matt splayed his hands on either side of Auston, lowered his head so he was peering into Auston's eyes. He still kept his distance though so that there was half a foot of space between their bodies. Auston glowered, acutely aware of that space now, of what it would take to make Matt close that gap. Of how part of him really wanted him to. Matt watched all of this flicker across Auston's expression, he knew, so he arranged his face into a coy smile. Something haughty broke into his expression he knew, it always did, and he absently smoothed his hair back from his forehead, glanced up at Matt in a way he instinctively knew Matt liked. Neither wanted to break the silence first, it held like that, neither intensifying nor fading, until finally Matt gave in.

"You just have to convince them you're stronger than you are. Most of them will be afraid to challenge you then." Straight to the point. Auston doesn't want to look away and betray how much it had been bothering him so he just watches Matt, hears the conviction of his words.

"Is that what you do?"

"Me? Oh no. My strength is all real. I can fucking demolish you." He lets his voice drop on the word demolish, a sweet secret, a threat, a promise. Auston feels heat dart down his chest and lower, a red searing blush blooms in his face but still he won't look away. The light dims in Matt's eyes and suddenly something precarious hovers between them. Auston has one more moment to imagine the space between them closed, bodies pressed together, before Matt tears himself away. He opens the cupboard below the sink and drops his empty bottle into a bin with a loud clunk.

"Mitch knows how to take care of himself. Shocking, I know." There's some guilt in his tone and Auston knows he imagined the same thing Auston did: Mitch coming into the kitchen to find them there, doing things they've never done together, only with him. Separately. Auston had never allowed himself to be this close to Matt before, to be alone with him. He isn't quite sure why he's allowed it now.

"I guess you're right." He replies, mostly just for something to say. And maybe it is true, Mitch has always known his limit, has never let his size get in his way but also never let it be exploited either. Well. Except when he wants it to be. Auston shakes the thought from his mind before he can follow it too far. He knows what Matt knows too, that Mitch wouldn't forgive them going behind his back, creating something he wasn't part of. Being something apart from him. The mutual separation just then was an agreement that nobody wanted that. Even so, Matt watched him now, a look like concern he'd never known as his own before. Auston rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, tried to ignore how eagerly he wanted to drink that feeling in, have it all to himself. Matt glanced away and then back again, abandoning whatever emotion he had been playing out moments before.

"I protect him when it matters." Matt says pointedly.

"Yeah." Auston manages to mumble. "I should go." Auston says, meaning it this time. It's already gone too far.

"Yeah." Matt agrees. He follows him down the narrow corridor, past the closed door behind which Mitch sleeps soundly. As he slips into his shoes Matt retrieves his coat and a hat from the closet next to the door. The coat is Auston's, the hat isn't. He takes the coat and puts it on, despite the fact that getting back to his own apartment doesn't really require him to go outside. The hat is a dopey winter one, with strings hanging down either side with ear flaps, blue and white stripes and small blue pom poms at the end of each string. It looks old, predated by Matt's time spent in Toronto. And definitely a hat for a child.

Matt shoves the hat playfully over Auston's head and he lets him, he's not even sure why. Once the hat is forced over his head, only halfway down as it's so small, Matt's hand lingers, cupping Auston's cheek. Auston leans into the touch and for the moment they both forget how ridiculous they must look, sharing an intimate moment over this funny hat. Matt's hand drifts down, presses lightly, flat across Auston's chest, and Auston smiles a little as he exhales against his hand, chest heaving. He's not small the way Mitch is small. Auston knows that if you press a hand across Mitch's chest you feel a hollowed out space where it feels like his chest is caving in, the ridge of his collar bone, all of his bones so vulnerable and clear to the touch. Auston is more heavyset, the curve of his skin tracing the musculature of his chest. He feels the difference between him and Mitch just then, Mitch's body striking moreso in its absence. He inhales and exhales a few more times, the difference washes over him. Matt is just watching him, expressionless, eyes bright in the dim lit foyer. Finally Auston turns away. "See you in the morning," he mutters, stepping into the hallway. Matt doesn't say a word. He watches Auston pick his way down the hall to the elevator. Waits for the elevator doors to open before he gives him the slightest wave and softly lets the apartment door close.

Instead of taking the elevator to the indoor tunnel between Auston's apartment and Matt's, Auston presses the button for the ground floor and takes a short walk outside to his own building. The cold wakes him up from what felt like a dream. He enters his own building after removing the hat, fingers toying with the strings, the pom poms, the worn Leaf symbol sewed into the yarn. He opens his bag as he steps into the elevator and slides the hat inside, willing himself not to think about this night until he sees Mitch again, until he can form a narrative in his mind that includes all 3 of them. Instead of going straight to bed Auston throws himself onto his sofa with his coat still on, settles into the silence of his own home. From the kitchen he hears the dull buzz of the refrigerator and the ticking of the wall clock. Felix the cat, tail swinging in time, one of few things he brought with him from home. Each heavy swing of the second hand lulls Auston into a calm he knows better than almost anything. He dozes on the couch for a while before he finally carries himself off to bed.

He crossed his room to his bathroom in just his boxers he brushed his teeth with the light dimmed. As he turned to return to bed something caught his eye and he turned the light up on high. The clinical buzz of the light and the sudden blinding white made him blink and then squint. Was he imagining it? He moved closer to the mirror and there it was, not a bruise exactly, but the softest outline, a whisper of a bruise. About the size of Matt's palm, the perfect circle of the cupboard door on the tender skin of his lower back. He rubbed a thumb across it gently before switching out the light.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I'm still working out in my head the way the 3 of them fit together. This is the start of that.
> 
> 2\. [The fight scene in case you needed reminding.](http://matthewmartin.tumblr.com/post/157129936523/werenskiz-known-goon-mitch-marner-defends-auston)
> 
> 3\. I have no idea where any of them actually live, although being a Torontonian I have a pretty good picture of the city and how the boys fit into my idea of the city. So I imagine all 3 live in two buildings a stone's throw from the ACC. It's attached by a tunnel a dozen or so stories up. [This is the building I imagine](http://tri-clean.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/PCL-Concord-CityPlace-Block-29.jpg). The buildings are real, the living situation fictitious. 
> 
> 4\. The title is inspired by the song Get Better by Frank Turner.
> 
> 5\. Feedback is welcome! Love you all! I'm also on tumblr: [matthewmartin](http://www.matthewmartin.tumblr.com)


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